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September 22, 2006

G154: Red Sox 7, Blue Jays 1

Julian Tavarez pitched a complete game (9-7-1-1-1, 99). His pitch count by innings:

6-21-11 12-8-13 11-8-9 = 99

It was his second career CG; he threw his first for the Rockies, on September 5, 2000.

Sexy Lips recorded 19 outs on ground balls. He was in a bit of trouble in the second inning. Three singles and a walk had loaded the bases with one run in. Reed Johnson drilled a line drive right at Mike Lowell, who got an easy unassisted double play to end the threat.

After that, Toronto managed only three base runners: Lyle Overbay's 2-out double in the 3rd (which fell between Wily Mo Pena and Gabe Kapler and should have been caught), Alex Rios's leadoff single in the 4th, and Vernon Wells's infield hit in the 9th.

Lowell clubbed a two-run home run to get the Sox on the board in the second; Alex Gonzalez doubled twice and drove in three runs, Kapler and Mark Loretta each had two hits.

David Ortiz, who is one home run shy of tying Babe Ruth's record for road HRs in a season (32, 1927), was 0-for-3 with two walks.

As Gordon Edes writes in his column in today's Globe, even the most ardent Ramirez apologist will have to confront a litany of sobering facts and truths in reading a column that, in my opinion, is long overdue. Here's a morsel:

"While the Red Sox crumbled when Ramírez went on hiatus -- last night was the 22d game out of 30 Ramírez has missed since taking himself out of the last game of the Yankee massacre Aug. 21, during which he has been paid $1.918 million (calculated on his base salary of $15 million this season) -- he had the audacity this week, through agent Greg Genske, to reiterate to the Red Sox his desire to be traded this winter..."

Desire to be traded? Fuck him and the agent he rode in on. As one reads the accounts of Tek, Youk, Lowell, Gonzo, and several other Sox bandaging themselves up and sucking it up to get back in the line-up, Manny's indifference to the cause is a throwback to another time - one where he would have fit right in as one of 25 guys riding in 25 cabs.

In a twist of journalistic irony, the article comes on a day when the team finds themselves in Toronto, the emotional and cultural epicenter of hockey in Canada. The credo of hockey, whose combatants are notoriously impervious to and often defiant of pain, is summarized in a simple question that teammates ask of each other: are you injured, or are you just hurt?

While Ramirez has refused to play hurt - the team's hands tied in trying to acertain the veracity and significance of said pain - his teammates have played with and through a variety of injuries in an effort to save what became a lost season.

Kudos to Edes for bringing this article forth, one that will no doubt inspire much debate in this space and many others.